To learn more about Google Social Search, also see our What Is Google Social Search page.

Zuckerberg On Search: “At Some Point, We’ll Do It” & Be “Uniquely Positioned”

Sep 11, 2012 at 5:50pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Waiting for a Facebook search engine? Eventually, it'll arrive, says Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. But it might not be what you expect. Speaking in an interview today at TechCrunch Disrupt with Mike Arrington, Zuckerberg said that Facebook is doing a billion searches per day, "and we're not even trying." Most searches are, as we’ve heard in the past, really people searching for other people. But there are also searches for brands. "There’s a big opportunity there," Zuckerberg said, of going beyond people search. But the opportunity might not be to build a search engines as they� [...]

Google Search Results Show Some Facebook User Posts Leaking Out Of Walled Garden

Aug 22, 2012 at 9:34am ET by Sean Carlos

[caption id="attachment_130897" align="alignright" width="192" caption="Walled garden"][/caption] Facebook has earned its reputation as an AOL-like walled garden by keeping most of the content generated within Facebook hidden from those who haven't logged in. Not only does a login screen stop general Internet users from viewing Facebook content without logging in, it also impedes search engine indexing. Currently, Google can index: a limited view of Facebook user profiles "Fan" Pages, including user posts Facebook comments left on third-party sites At one point in time, sea [...]

Live Blogging: Interview with Amit Singhal, Google Fellow

May 15, 2012 at 3:56am ET by Daniel Waisberg

Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman are on the stage at SMX London to interview Amit Singhal. Amit is a Google Fellow, a honorary title reserved for Google’s most accomplished engineers, and he has spearheaded Google’s core ranking team since 2000. He’s also a key influencer of Search Plus Your World, Google’s search experience centered around people, that lets you find personal results from your world — your photos, your friends, your stuff — in search. Chris Sherman is on stage to introduce Amit Singhal, Google's Vice President and Google Fellow. Chris provides Amit's background [...]

Head-To-Head: Bing’s Social Search Vs. Google’s Search Plus Your World

May 10, 2012 at 1:00pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Earlier this year, Google made its results more social with Search Plus Your World. Now Bing has reshaped how it handles social information as part of its "The New Bing" launch. Which does better, Google's blended search+search model or Bing's more segregated approach. Let's look at some examples. Hey Google, How's New Girl? I thought I'd start with a search for New Girl. It's a great show. I should know. I was a Fan of the Week. What's Google show me? The arrows point at things that have come because of social connections, and I'm only going to focus on these things, in this head-to-he [...]

Google’s Results Get More Personal With “Search Plus Your World”

Jan 10, 2012 at 9:30am ET by Danny Sullivan

Google's search results are undergoing their most radical transformation ever, as a new "Search Plus Your World" format begins rolling out today. It finds both content that's been shared with you privately along with matches from the public web, all mixed into a single set of listings. The change is live now, though not everyone will see it until it fully launches over the next few days. It's only for those signed-in to Google.com and searching in English. You'll know when it happens, because Google will alert you with a message like this above your search results: The new system will [...]

Facebook Comments Now Being Indexed By Google

Nov 1, 2011 at 10:11am ET by Greg Finn

Add-on commenting systems like Facebook Comments enhance the user experience, but can make it harder for search engines to index content. Most third party commenting systems leverage javascript to display information and add bells and whistles. However, Labnol.org reported that now Facebook Comments are being crawled (and ranking) in Google's SERPs effectively breaking the mold for third party commenting systems and rankings: Facebook Comments can be displayed in a few different formats, XFBML (Xtended FaceBook Markup Language) and HTML5. While the report references that Google i [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Social Search

How To Find Local Influencers On Google Plus

Oct 31, 2011 at 10:46am ET by Andrew Shotland

Google has been making a big deal out of privacy lately, but Google+ just launched a slew of new features designed to make people easier to find. I am particularly intrigued by the new Ripples feature, which allows you to see who has shared a post and track it as it gets shared by others. It is, in fact, like watching a ripple. Ripples strikes me as much more of a feature for marketers than for consumers. I suppose Google+ wants to attract power users who typically have more of a marketing mindset than the average Joe. So of course the first thing I thought of was that Ripples would [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Social Search | Local Search

Google+ Public Posts Coming To Google’s Social Search Results

Aug 12, 2011 at 6:52pm ET by Matt McGee

Google has added another source to its social search results: public posts from Google Plus. Social search has been adding annotations to search results when content from your social connections (not to be confused with your Google+ Circles) was shared on services such as Twitter, LinkedIn and others. Soon you may start seeing annotations that mention Google's own social service, and these will come from people in your Google+ circles: Google emphasizes that this only applies to public posts on Google+, and that it'll only work for you if you're a Google+ user that's signed in to [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Google+ | Google: Social Search | Top News

How Being “Friends” On Google+ Leads To Better Rankings

Jul 27, 2011 at 9:59pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Want to rank better on Google? Get people to add you to their Google+ Circles, and that seems to be a potentially huge boost, based on a search I just did. I'm Friends With Ford When I looked for cars about an hour ago, I found a listing for Ford at the bottom of the first page of results, in the 10th position. In addition, there was an enhancement telling me that Ford had shared this link: Interesting. Why is Ford showing up and with that enhancement in my results? Hovering my mouse over the Ford Motor Company link displayed this: Indeed, I am connected to Ford through Google Plus. Fo [...]

Google Plus One Button Now 3X Faster

Jul 26, 2011 at 5:11pm ET by Barry Schwartz

Google announced they have now speed up the Google +1 button for websites. The button is now automatically up to 3 times faster and best of all, webmasters do not need to update their code for the speed changes to take affect. The change is automatic. Google said, "no action is required on your part, so just sit back, relax, and watch as the button loads more quickly than before." Is 3X faster not enough? Google has also released a new asynchronous snippet that is even faster. This feature allows your web site to continue loading while your browser downloads the +1 JavaScript. T [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: +1 | Google: Social Search

As Deal With Twitter Expires, Google Realtime Search Goes Offline

Jul 4, 2011 at 11:56am ET by Danny Sullivan

Yesterday, we reported that Google Realtime Search had mysteriously disappeared. Today comes the reason why: Google's agreement with Twitter to carry its results has expired, taking with it much of the content that was in the service with it. Google sent us this explanation: Since October of 2009, we have had an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results through a special feed, and that agreement expired on July 2. While we will not have access to this special feed from Twitter, information on Twitter that’s publicly available to our crawlers will still be s [...]

First Look: “Hands On” With Google+

Jun 28, 2011 at 7:52pm ET by Greg Sterling

I've been manically playing with Google Plus for about an hour now and, while there is disagreement here among the editorial team at Search Engine Land, I give it a qualified "thumbs up." At first glance many people will dismiss Google Plus as redundant and derivative of Twitter and Facebook, in particular. This was also true of the ill-fated Buzz. But this is a much better and more thoughtfully designed product than Buzz. Familiar UI but Takes Getting Used To Accordingly the interface is familiar and relatively intuitive but Google Plus still takes some "getting used to." Some have alre [...]

Google’s Facebook Competitor, The Google+ Social Network, Finally Arrives

Jun 28, 2011 at 1:12pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Google's long expected second shot at taking on Facebook in the social networking space has arrived in the form of the Google+ Project. It has some interesting twists on the social networking model but is far from a Facebook-killer. That Name The terrible name is a bad start. Google+? Google+! I can't even question or exclaim about the bad name without it looking bad in writing. Pronounced "Google Plus," the product is officially written as Google+ -- making placing any punctuation after the name fairly awkward. Seriously, I'm cursing whoever made the final decision to go with Google+ [...]

Confirmed: Google Showing Google +1 Counts To Logged Out Users

Jun 22, 2011 at 9:38pm ET by Barry Schwartz

Google is now showing the Google +1 counts for logged out users. When the Google +1 feature launched in March, searchers were only able to see who in their Google network +1'ed a search result. Now, if you search while logged out, Google will show you the total +1 count for some search results. This may help Google promote the Google +1 feature and encourage additional users to try it. Search Engine Watch spotted the change earlier. Google has since confirmed to us that it is new and showing to all signed-out users. "We're now showing aggregate +1 annotations for signed-out users in sear [...]

Google’s “Me On The Web” Pushes Google Profiles — Take That, Facebook?

Jun 15, 2011 at 7:57pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Google has launched a new "Me On The Web" section within its Google Dashboard area, which seems designed to push more people toward creating Google Profiles, as well as create greater awareness of how things that leak out of Facebook and other social networks may end up on Google. The Facebook Factor Perhaps I'm reading too much into the feature. But I think it has to be taken in context with Facebook's recent accusations that Google has been somehow been secretly collecting information about people from Facebook and other social networks without their permission or their knowledge. Exami [...]

It’s Not “He Said, She Said” Over Google Rankings & Facebook Shares

Jun 7, 2011 at 11:56pm ET by Danny Sullivan

On Tuesday morning, SEOmoz's Rand Fishkin presented evidence at our SMX Advanced conference that there's a high correlation between Facebook Shares and ranking well on search engines. In afternoon, the head of Google's web spam team Matt Cutts said that Google doesn't see Facebook Share data at all. An SEO-search engine catfight? No, both actually agree. I've been somewhat amazed to read some of the tweets this evening that are positioning what Matt said as somehow contradicting what Rand said. A few on Twitter are even squaring off over whom to believe. That's dumb, when both "sides" agree [...]

It’s Here: Google +1 Buttons For Websites

Jun 1, 2011 at 1:41pm ET by Matt McGee

As expected, Google is now offering +1 buttons that can be placed on any web page via a short code snippet. The code/button is supported in 44 languages, but +1 activity continues to show only on English-language search results on Google.com. (Google says it's working to expand +1 worldwide.) Webmasters can use Google's self-serve code generator to customize the size and language of the button, along with a few other advanced options. There's more about the advanced options here, and be sure to read the FAQs at the bottom where you'll learn, among other things, that Google recommend [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: +1 | Google: SEO | Google: Social Search | Top News

Google Launching Social Search In 19 New Languages

May 19, 2011 at 9:49am ET by Barry Schwartz

Google announced they have begun their international rollout of Google Social Search, which launched in October 2009. Social Search is being pushed out to 19 new languages over the upcoming days and weeks. Google promises even more languages in the near future. Google said, "with these changes, we want to help you find the most relevant information from the people who matter to you." In January 2010, Google pushed social search live for many, after a beta release in late 2009. Since then, Google has continued to integrate social signals into the product to make it more relevant and usef [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Google: Social Search | Top News

Bing Ups Ante In Social Search, Adds More Facebook “Likes” To Search Results

May 16, 2011 at 2:58pm ET by Greg Sterling

Bing is taking the next step in its self-conscious evolution from "search engine" to "decision engine." Perhaps we could equally use the term "conversation engine," as Bing begins to emphasize social content and even tries to enable connections between people through the deeper integration of Facebook and "Likes" data. It isn't news that Bing is integrating the Facebook data; that was originally announced in October last year. Rather the news today is that Bing is entering a kind of "phase II" of the process, doing some more interesting and potentially useful things with Likes. According [...]

How Facebook Enables The Google Social “Scraping” It’s Upset About

May 12, 2011 at 8:03pm ET by Danny Sullivan

I wrote a very long examination of the issues that Facebook employed a PR firm to publicize, about how Facebook feels Google may be violating privacy with its Google Social Search product. Here's a shorter look, especially from the angle of how Facebook itself has enabled Google to do what Facebook is now complaining about. Facebook said this about Google, in its statement from my original article: We wanted third parties to verify that people did not approve of the collection and use of information from their accounts on Facebook and other services for inclusion in Google Social Circles [...]

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